When did you dance with death?
by whenthemarshmallowmettheslayer
Summary: When did they all die? When did this become their lives? Was Damon to blame? Stefan to be blamed? Was Katherine to blame? Or Klaus to blame? Whose to blame for the fact they're all murders instead of simply, normal teenager? (Or post-Kol's murder Caroline wonders when did they all die. Not their actually deaths but who they once were.)


A/N: Originally posted on ao3 under the pen name youngjusticewriter.

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Sometimes Caroline wonders when she died. No, it hadn't been in the moment when she'd been fighting for breathe under the weight of the pillow that Katherine had used to suffocate her all those months ago. She had died, yes, but Caroline hadn't really died. It wasn't even when her teeth (sharp pain in her upper gums, shaking hands lifted towards her mouth as she stares at the mirror - at herself - in petrified horror) had sunk into Kevin Williams' dark throat and she had, for a moment until another sort of horror filled her at the realization she's a monster, felt this rush as the man's warm blood started to fill her dry mouth.

It probably had been when Caroline saw a woman, Abagail she later learned, putting up missing posters of Kevin up in town. Caroline had given her a shy smile why all she could think of was 'I killed your love one, and I'm smiling kindly at you instead of telling he's dead.'

Caroline never found out if Abagail was Kevin's sister, girlfriend, or wife. She never wanted to know if there were kids that would grow up without their father because of her.

(Or perhaps Caroline had died the moment she invited Damon in her house. The moment she looked up at him in horror and he tore roughly into her neck despite her cries of stop; 'please stop hurting me,' she managed to say - to beg - as her quivering hands tried and failed to push Damon off her.

The moment she tried to sneak out of her room with fear in her heart - in her throat, bruised hips, dried blood on her neck, and shaking legs.

She had walked on her tip toes in fear of waking him up.

It hadn't worked.)

Caroline, when she wasn't fighting for her and her friends to to just live (they had been just teenagers - this wasn't how their lives should be), had thrown herself into her committees far more than she had ever done before. If she was too busy, if she was exhausted from planning parties and ways to earn money for new cheerleading equipment, she would think of such things. Of how her mom would (had) hate her, how she's a murderer, and when she had died (and Caroline didn't mean from Elena's evil twin, doppelgänger actually, having suffocated her).

Right now as Caroline stares (and smells ohGodthesmell) at the corpse in her best friend's house she wonders for the first time when had Elena died?

When did they all die? When did this become their lives? Was Damon to blame? Stefan to be blamed? Was Katherine to blame? Or Klaus to blame? Were Klaus' parents to blame for trying to keep their kids alive and eventually making them into monsters? Whose to blame for the fact they're all murders instead of simply, normal teenager?

And you know what? They're going to be dead for sure instead of just their morality and innocence having kicked the bucket. There's no vampire blood in their system that could cure them from what Klaus will inflict; Katherine ran from Klaus for hundreads of years and her family was slaughtered just because she wanted to live. They had killed Kol - Klaus' own brother - and trapped him with the burnt corpse.

It's still something, something Caroline can't name, to realize that the thing there infront of her was once Kol. Actually was Kol just a day ago. Kol who Caroline can hear in head: 'she most certainly looks fine walking away from you.' Kol who probably had a sireline who knows how long.

Her friends committed a genocide and here she is. Just standing still and staring like she's once again been compelled, like a vacant Barbie doll made of plastic and forced smiles, would at the horrid sight before her. (She's going to have nightmares of the smell alone if she lives that long.)

Eventually Caroline manages to tear her eyes from the corpse to look at Klaus. Those eyes, Caroline knows just like she knows the name of every brand of clothing and makeup worth buying in this small town, are broken eyes. Those eyes are far more dangerous than the time when Klaus had been flirting, daring Caroline, before like a light switch Klaus had changed, admitting flippantly that she was beautiful but he would kill her.

Briefly, Caroline can't help but wonder if this was where Klaus (or what was left of him and his humanity that sometimes she catches herself believing is there) had died. If so, Klaus had died with his brother and that was more than Caroline could say.

Caroline still didn't know when the girl she use to be had died.


End file.
